Interested in a contest? No cash rewards….just bragging rights among your fellow Bill James Online Members.
A few years ago, I started a thread on Reader Posts that amounted to a simple contest – predicting what % of the vote that each player on the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA) Hall of Fame ballot would receive in that year’s voting. A small group of members (just 6 of us) participated, but I thought it was a lot of fun, and it made tracking the discussion leading up to the announcement of the results much more interesting.
And to make it even sweeter….I won. Sure, it was only 6 of us….but it was still satisfying.
A couple of years ago, I took it to a broader audience, and posted it as an article on this web site. 18 members participated.
Last year we repeated the contest, and we increased participation to 26 members. I’m hoping for an even larger response this time.
Here’s how it works. There are 35 names on the 2019 BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot. You submit an entry where you predict the % of the vote that each of the 35 players will receive in the final vote tally.
When the final results are announced, we’ll add up the errors (the sum of the number of percentage points that you’re off on each player’s prediction) to see what your total "error score" is, and then divide that by 35 to get an average error. The member with the lowest average error score is the winner.
Normally, I include my entry in this article by way of example, but based on some feedback I’m going to hold off submitting it just yet. I will submit it shortly, probably within the next couple of days.
One of the challenges of predicting the results is that first-time players on the ballot don’t have a track record from previous years. Although, conversely, many of the first timers are easy because you would expect them to receive very little or no support. And, of course, each year experiences its own dynamic of players that make a big move up or down in the % of the vote received, and sometimes you get players nearing the end of their run on the ballot, which can result in a big impact on their vote totals.
Remember, who’s in or out is not the important thing about this contest. The key is the individual %’s that we are predicting, and how far off we are.
For example….let’s say you predict that Barry Bonds will receive 55% of the vote, and he actually receives 60% of the vote this time. The error score on Bonds would be 5 percentage points. The scoring takes the absolute value of the difference (in percentage points) between the predicted % and the actual %. Direction (high or low) doesn’t matter….it’s how many percentage points there are between the predicted and the actual. Then we average all of your individual error scores to get an overall average error score.
(Now, some might suggest that a "forecast" error should technically be calculated as (actual-error)/actual, but I’m choosing not to do it that way. I’m keeping this contest simple. If you’re off by a percentage point, high or low, that will be considered a 1 percentage point error, and we’ll just calculate the average errors that way.)
Also, I should note that predictions should not based on who you think is deserving. You’re trying to predict what a body of around 420 voters will do.
You can submit an entry now. I’ll keep the contest open through Tuesday December 4th. That should give you plenty of time to come up with your entry. I’ll post reminders along the way.
Actual results won’t be tallied until the Hall of Fame results are announced. According to the BBWAA web site, the writers can submit their ballots through December 31st, and results are scheduled to be announced Jan 22, 2019.
Why am I cutting it off so early (December 4th)? Well, as we get deeper into December, more and more voters decide to publish and/or comment on their ballots (on Twitter, in a column, etc.), and they are collected and displayed in Ryan Thibodaux’s "Hall of Fame Tracker" (also referred to as the "Gizmo") which is available online, and you can see how the "public" ballot results are tracking. Now, not every voter makes his or her ballot public ahead of time, and sometimes the results can be quite deceptive ("public" voters have had a tendency to vote for more players per ballot, on average, than "private" voters do). But, still, I want to have people submit their ballots before too many ballots become public knowledge. I think it’s fairer to do it that way rather than having someone potentially gain an advantage by waiting for more and more information to be published.
The top 5 entries from last year were:
|
Member
|
Avg. Error
|
|
ChrisBodig
|
1.36
|
|
jpc1957
|
2.62
|
|
llozada
|
2.90
|
|
Dan
|
2.93
|
|
hansjn
|
3.30
|
If you go back 2 years, here were the top 5 entries:
|
Member
|
Avg. Error
|
|
jpc1957
|
2.95
|
|
Dan
|
3.32
|
|
ChrisBodig
|
3.33
|
|
MarisFan61
|
3.37
|
|
DaveNJnews
|
4.12
|
So, as you can see, members ChrisBodig and jpc1957 have been very consistent. Will one of them take the crown for a second time, or will we have a new champion this year?
So, that’s it. Use whatever approach you like. Research past voting history. Consult your Ouija board, your crystal ball, your wheel of fortune. Whatever works for you.
Here’s how to submit an entry:
- Highlight the entire listing of names below with your mouse
- Hit <ctrl> C to Copy
- Click on the "Add a Comment" link at the end of this article
- Click inside the comment box and hit <ctrl> V to Paste. This should paste the list into the comment
- After the dash following each player’s name, type in your % prediction for that player (please limit it to no more than 1 decimal place).
- Post your comment
Here is the listing to copy and paste into your comment. Remember to enter your predicted percentages, and don’t skip anybody:
Rick Ankiel-
Jason Bay-
Lance Berkman-
Barry Bonds-
Roger Clemens-
Freddy Garcia-
Jon Garland-
Travis Hafner-
Roy Halladay-
Todd Helton-
Andruw Jones-
Jeff Kent-
Ted Lilly-
Derek Lowe-
Edgar Martinez-
Fred McGriff-
Mike Mussina-
Darren Oliver-
Roy Oswalt-
Andy Pettitte-
Juan Pierre-
Placido Polanco-
Manny Ramirez-
Mariano Rivera-
Scott Rolen-
Curt Schilling-
Gary Sheffield-
Sammy Sosa-
Miguel Tejada-
Omar Vizquel-
Billy Wagner-
Larry Walker-
Vernon Wells-
Kevin Youkilis-
Michael Young-
Thank you, and good luck!
Dan